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TRAINEE doctors have been offered £20,000 bursaries to work on the Isle of Wight.

A new recruitment scheme aimed at supporting areas which find it difficult to recruit doctors has been launched by NHS England, Health Education England, the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).

The Island was one of the areas identified for the one-year pilot scheme and the recruitment process for the first round of the scheme has already started.

To be eligible, trainee GPs have to commit to working on the Island for three years.

Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: "In areas that are particularly struggling to recruit GPs, often more remote areas, or those with high levels of deprivation, something needs to be done to make living and working there an attractive prospect to potential new recruits.

"This initiative is something the college has been proposing for some time and we are pleased to see it being implemented.

"Similar schemes have worked really well for other careers, such as teaching, and we hope it will encourage new GPs to under-doctored areas in the best interests of providing safe care now and in the future, wherever our patients live."